A Comparison of Numbers

Yes, I know. I haven’t updated the blog in about two months. I’m a terrible, terrible blogger. The worst thing I could do now is a cheesy, cop-out post where I just cut and paste someone else’s work. That would be very bad of me.

I’m going to do it anyway though. I think those who don’t really know much about the Foreign Service will find this essay very interesting. It is by John Naland, the president of AFSA (American Foreign Service Association), and addresses those who claim the Foreign Service isn’t stepping up in Iraq.

AFSAnet: Telling our Story

A small but growing number of voices are criticizing the State
Department and Foreign Service for not “stepping up to the plate” in
Iraq.  Some, including people who urged the 2003 invasion, clearly seek
to shift blame for failures by other actors.  However, other critics
appear to have no such malicious agenda, but rather base their
criticisms on wildly inflated estimations of the capacities of civilian
agencies to operate in combat zones such as Iraq.

AFSA is making an effort to set the record straight.  Toward that end,
AFSA President John Naland sent an e-mail on Oct. 16, 2007 to a
journalist who had written an error-laden diatribe about Foreign Service
staffing in Iraq.  Below are excerpts from that e-mail:

Here are some baseline facts about the Foreign Service.  The State
Department Foreign Service is made up of approximately 11,500 people.
Of them, 6,500 are Foreign Service officers (for example, political
officers) while 5,000 are Foreign Service specialists (for example,
Diplomatic Security agents).  There are another 1,500 or so Foreign
Service members at USAID, the Foreign Commercial Service, the Foreign
Agricultural Service, and the International Broadcasting Bureau, but I
will focus on the State Department Foreign Service component.

Let’s put the size of the State Department Foreign Service in
perspective.  The U.S. active- duty military is 119 times larger than
the Foreign Service.  The total uniformed military (active and reserve)
is 217 times larger.  A typical U.S. Army division is larger than the
entire Foreign Service.  The military has more uniformed personnel in
Mississippi than the State Department has diplomats worldwide.  The
military has more full colonels/Navy captains than the State Department
has diplomats.  The military has more band members than the State
Department has diplomats.  The Defense Department has almost as many
lawyers as the State Department has diplomats.

I will not even get into the huge disparities in operating budgets,
which are widely known.

The key point — especially for observers who think in terms of the
myriad capabilities of our nation’s large military — is that the
Foreign Service has a relatively small corps of officers.

Moreover, in contrast to the military, the vast majority of Foreign
Service members are forward deployed (thus the word “foreign” in
Foreign Service).  Today, in a time of armed conflict, 21.1 percent of
the active-duty military (290,000 out of 1,373,000) is stationed abroad
(ashore or afloat).  That compares to 68 percent of the Foreign Service
currently stationed abroad at 167 U.S. embassies and 100 consulates and
other missions.

There is nothing new about this high percentage of Foreign Service
forward deployment.  The percentages have not changed from two decades
ago when I joined.  Thus, the typical Foreign Service member serves
two-thirds of his or her career abroad.  Over a 30-year career, that
adds up to 20 years spent stationed overseas.

Where are these overseas Foreign Service members?  Nearly 60 percent
are at posts categorized by the U.S. government as “hardship” due to
difficult living conditions (for example, violent crime, harsh climate,
social isolation, unhealthy air, and/or terrorist threats).  Of those
hardship posts, half are rated at or above the 15-percent differential
level which constitutes great hardship.  Thus, unlike the old stereotype
seeing most Foreign Service members serving in comfortable Western
European capitals, only one third of overseas posts are non-hardship  –
and the majority of people at such posts are decompressing after serving
at a hardship post.

Again, the contrast with the military is instructive.  As previously
mentioned, 78.9 percent of the active-duty military is stationed
stateside (including 36,000 personnel in Hawaii).  Of those serving
abroad, there are more U.S. military personnel serving in the United
Kingdom, Germany, or Japan than the State Department has diplomats
worldwide.

The military does have a greater percentage of its personnel serving in
unaccompanied tours (ashore or afloat) than the Foreign Service.  I have
not found solid statistics on this point, but subtracting those
stationed at accompanied postings in Western Europe, Japan, and South
Korea, it appears that around 11 percent of the military serving in
unaccompanied tours.  But the Foreign Service is catching up.  Since
2001, the number of unaccompanied and limited-accompanied Foreign
Service positions has quadrupled to 700 (representing 6.1 percent of the
Foreign Service) at two dozen danger pay posts including Iraq,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.  This represents a dramatic
change for Foreign Service members, who previously had fewer than 200
unaccompanied slots to fill at a few posts such as Bogotá and Beirut.

Moreover, consider these facts.  Around 40 percent of the 7,800
overseas Foreign Service positions come up for reassignment each year
(including all 700 one-year unaccompanied positions and a mixture of
two-year great hardship posts and three-year lesser-hardship and
non-hardship posts).  That means that, in any given annual assignment
cycle, almost one quarter of all overseas Foreign Service jobs to be
filled are at unaccompanied or limited-accompanied danger pay posts.

But what about the toughest duty assignment:  Iraq.  Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, in an Oct. 1, 2007, interview with the New York Post
editorial board, stated that more than 20 percent of the Foreign Service
has served, or is serving, in Iraq.  I would have guessed that the
percentage was a little lower, but let’s stick with Secretary Rice’s
official estimate that 20 percent of our nation’s diplomats have
served in war-zone Iraq since 2003.

I have not found comparable military statistics.  Presumably, at least
for the Army and Marine Corps, it is over two-thirds with many troops
serving two or more tours.  But again, unlike the military which
maintains 78.9 percent of its active members stateside, the Foreign
Service has worldwide staffing responsibilities that necessitate posting
the majority of its members in the 188 countries besides Iraq.  Thus, of
the 80 percent of Foreign Service members who have not (yet) served in
Iraq, most are now at, or have recently returned from, a hardship
assignment.

There are approximately 200 Foreign Service positions currently at
Embassy Baghdad and another 70 or so at the 25 Provincial Reconstruction
Teams.  Compared to the U.S. military presence in Iraq, those numbers
look small.  Of course, the U.S. civilian presence in Iraq includes a
range of other types of employees.  But if press reports are accurate
that around 1,000 U.S. citizens work at Embassy Baghdad, then the
Foreign Service positions constitute about 20 percent of that total.
Turning to the PRTs, which comprise up to 600 members, the Foreign
Service component is 10 to 15 percent.

There are good reasons for those ratios.  As Secretary Rice has
repeatedly explained in public statements, no country’s diplomatic
corps has people with many of the skills now needed in Iraq: oil and gas
engineers, electrical grid managers, urban planners, city managers and
transportation planners.  If any U.S. defense planner in 2003 thought
that the State Department and other civilian federal agencies had such
people on staff in large numbers (Arabic speaking or not) ready to
rebuild Iraq, they were wrong.  Obviously, if they wanted to do so, the
president and Congress could staff up civilian agencies to take
responsibility for stabilization and reconstruction.  But they have not
done so.

Here are some other points to consider.  While some Foreign Service
members in Iraq are engaged in  support activities that do not require
them to leave the International Zone, many do travel in the “Red
Zone”– working out of Embassy Baghdad, serving at one of the
pre-surge PRTs, or serving at one of the 10 new PRTs embedded in Brigade
Combat Teams.  Also, although this was not the case right after the 2003
invasion, most Foreign Service members serve one-year tours in Iraq with
only a relative few going for shorter temporary duty assignments.  A
small but growing number of Foreign Service members have served more
than one tour in Iraq.  None, except perhaps for Diplomatic Security
special agents, are permitted to carry a weapon for self-defense.

The State Department so far has been able to fill its Iraq positions
with volunteers.  Every one of the more than 2,000 career Foreign
Service members who have stepped up to the plate to serve in Iraq has
done so as a volunteer.  They receive less than two-weeks of special
training to serve in a combat zone (unlike their predecessors 40 years
ago who received three to four months of training before deploying to
South Vietnam in the CORDS program).  While Foreign Service volunteers
in Iraq do receive added pay and other incentives (but not tax-free
income like the military enjoys), surveys show that most are motivated
by patriotism and a professional desire to contribute to our nation’s
top foreign policy objective.  If the State Department ever does run out
of volunteers, the Secretary of State retains the legal authority to
direct assignments.